A collaboration between Wellington-based innovation hub, Creative HQ, and the Chengdu government is creating cross-border networks that could promote the capital as a global provider of innovation services.

With Lightning Lab XX Demo Day right around the corner, we spoke with four of the nine female led teams to get an insider perspective on the 4-month mentorship-driven business acceleration programme. Little Yellow Bird, Patternsnap, Music Ecademy and Sipreme shared their big wins, fast fails, most inspiring moments and touched on what’s next for their ventures post Demo Day.

This post is part of a fortnightly series documenting the successes, challenges and overall progress of the NZ entrepreneurs and government innovators that were involved in the second R9 Accelerator programme.

Creative HQ is excited to announce the opening of 1st Assembly at 125 High Street, Lower Hutt, a space for hardware-focussed Hutt startups to work and collaborate. The residency also comes with the support needed to build the startups’ networks, shared knowledge, resilience and high growth potential.

38 of New Zealand’s brightest young entrepreneurs brought their A game to the capital last week, pitching the 8 businesses they have spent the last 6 weeks building, validating and pivoting with the support of Wellington’s startup ecosystem.

For the uninitiated, The R9 Accelerator is a 12 week programme created by Better for Business and Creative HQ to turn government project opportunities into innovative and impactful solutions by having public and private sector innovators working alongside each other to create gov tech startups.

Last Thursday, seven of the latest top New Zealand startups took to the stage to pitch to an auditorium of investors at Lightning Lab Manufacturing’s inaugural Demo Day. Lightning Lab Manufacturing is the first start-up accelerator in New Zealand for companies with physical products, and the first vertical to deviate away from Lightning Lab’s traditionally digital programme.

“We both seek to deliver positive impact for New Zealand but do so through distinct missions. Ākina is focused on scaling social impact through social enterprise and Creative HQ on high-growth innovation through commercial enterprise,” says Korn.